Red light ‘countdown’ appears on your car’s dashboard via smartphone

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You know how hard it is to look through the windshield and see the light turning from green to yellow and then to red? There’s an app for that now. Connected Signals of Eugene, OR, created an app called EnLighten. It tracks the status of traffic lights in a growing handful of cities, reports how long before the light goes green or red, and suggests based on your current speed if you’ll clear the intersection before it turns red. All this shows on your car’s center stack display.

So, while it sounds like a silly little app for BMW-driving, brain-dead MBA yuppies, and the millennials who followed in their boomer parents’ footsteps, it has serious safety and fuel-saving possibilities. Although for now the complete in-car package is only for Apple devices in BMWs.

How it works

Most urban traffic signals have a degree of smartness built in: They go green in sequence. They can be remotely changed to extended green by traffic central if traffic builds up. Each signal reports how long until it turns yellow then red, or until a red light goes green. Connected Signals (originally, Green Driver) is harnessing that existing infrastructure, captures data in real time, adds further interpretation based on past signal timing, and sends info via its app to smartphones. If the traffic data doesn’t show time-to-yellow, the information can be interpolated from past signal changes. EnLighten works outside of the still-evolving network of DSRC (dedicated short range communications) that would report the status of traffic signals and the position/speed/direction of DSRC-equipped cars.

The BMW adaption of EnLighten, an Apple Store download, connects to the BMW Apps feature (optional, not standard; don’t blow by this feature when you order a new car) and then to the center stack display. This is the BMW-exclusive part, because there are standalone EnLighten for smartphones already.

Predictive information on whether you’ll make the light under green or yellow based on your current speed and location, and a recommendation whether to keep going or slow down since you won’t make the light.

An audio alert for when the upcoming signal is about to change.

An alert when the light turns green.

Turn-signal-dependent information. If you approach an intersection where the left turn is a separate green arrow, the timers and alerts are based on that.

This is the kind of information that would especially useful shown in a head-up display, something that BMW promotes heavily, or the multi-information display (MID) between the tach and speedometer. The PR photos BMW distributed shows Enlighten taking over the entire 8- to 10-inch BMW display.

EnLighten iPhone, Android apps if you don’t have a Bimmer

BMW accounts 2 of every 100 new-car sales in the US. For everyone else, you can download the EnLighten app either for iPhone or for Android.

EnLighten cites a growing number of cities — more than “10,000 lights in over 100 cities and towns,” but that includes Christchurch, New Zealand, and other international locations. In the US, BMW cites 2,000 traffic lights in Portland and Eugene, OR; and Salt Lake City. Connected Signals’ US map shows more than two dozen cities, the majority “coming soon” or “in process.”

Challenges to nationwide, every-automaker adoption

All of this sounds good. There may be hurdles to wider implementation. Cash-strapped cites, and what city doesn’t see itself that way, may be looking for fees to pull a data feed from the service, or it may award access to a single high bidder rather than make it freely available. That might lead to user charges to use an EnLighten-like app, fewer users, less safety, and continued traffic congestion.

As Apple CarPlay is adopted, Apple ($700 billion market cap) isn’t worried about small operations like Connected Signals. When CarPlay is up and running, ditto Android Auto, only a handful of apps are passed through the car: the Apple (or Google) mapping and music apps plus phone and contacts, as well as the streaming music apps too big to blow off such as Pandora or Spotify (or Apple’s streaming music). Dozens of useful car apps ranging from EnLighten to third-party navigation to the cool G-meter and 0-60 timer, have to stand in line to prove their worthiness. Meanwhile, access to the phone is locked out.

There may be some Big Brother aspects to think through. EnLighten says it can warn of another driver apparently with EnLighten possibly running a red light. If you and I know about that, the cops could, too, so this could be a revenue enforcement tool.

At the same, there are green aspects, as you’d suspect from the company’s original Green Driver name. If you know you won’t make the light, you can coast in and save a bit of fuel, and maybe add charge to your hybrid’s battery. A car with adaptive cruise control and ACC connection to Enlighten could modulate the speed to slow down automatically. Perhaps if you’re under the limit, it could speed up to the limit, or maybe 5 mph over (maybe), so you get through the light under green or no worse than yellow. Enlighten has claimed up to 5% fuel savings for drivers using the app.

A Department of Transportation overview of EnLighten notes EnLighten could “face concerns over driver distraction” (because drivers will need to look at the dashboard every once in a while?), currently works with fixed time signals only, and that the “GPS on mobile devices lacks requisite accuracy” for accurate drive/slow down suggestions. “Cloud sourcing” from cell phones reporting speed and position could help infer signal status.

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